NLG is dedicated to making informed decisions based on sound knowledge and honest assessment of the facts involved in the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to increase milk production in cows. The purpose of this conference is to educate students and the community on important aspects of the rBGH controversy. Representatives from all sides of the issue have been invited. From Vermont Law, a link no longer available online.

The allopathic remedy to tonsillitis: Milk! "While the throat is very sore, feed the child soft or liquid foods such as milk, milkshakes, ice cream, soups, or instant-breakfast milk drinks..." [After I had my tonsils out, I was served ice cream. Then I puked!]

On Colin Campbell by Charlotte Gerson: When T. Colin Campbell first started as a young nutritionist, he was sent to the Philippines to help the poor starving people. The main thing they were stressing was increasing protein, because at the tiime they were taught that protein is nutrition. So they raised the protein content of these children's foods from five to twenty percent. Lo and behold the kids developed liver cancers. Two physicians in India did similar experiments with rats. They raised their content of milk proteins from five to twenty percent. All thirty-five rats, 100 percent, developed liver cancer. Later on, Campbell studied China and found that in certain provinces where no milk is used, there is no cancer. He called milk the number one carcinogen in the world.

Got milk? For many people, there are reasons to get rid of it

BY
MILTON R.
MILLS

In mid-March, People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals sparked controversy with its campaign promoting beer's
advantages over cow's milk to college students. Certainly, few health professionals
would advocate beer as a health tonic, yet many mistakenly regard milk
as a necessarily wholesome choice. Indeed, saying ``don't drink your milk''
may initially sound as un-American as ``don't eat apple pie.'' But PETA's
anti-milk points are well-taken.

For generations, most parents and physicians have kept urging
children to drink their glasses of milk. To be sure, they generally had
good intentions-but they also had been flooded with endless promotions
and ads from the financially well-set dairy industry. More recently, it's
hard to miss those here, there and everywhere milk-mustache and ``Got Milk?''
billboards, bus ads, print ads, TV spots, and classroom promotions. The
milk industry even hit the road with its ``Better Bones Tour,'' visiting
100 U.S. cities with trucks carrying displays claiming a beneficial relationship
between dairy and osteoporosis.

Science, however, has been raining on dairy's parade. Observations
in South African black townships, with virtually no dairy consumption,
showed residents there experience almost no osteoporosis, while the chronic
bone disease afflicts millions in dairy-devouring places such as Scandinavia,
Canada, and the United States. In a finding published in the American Journal
of Public Health in June 1997, the 12-year Harvard Nurses' Study of almost
78,000 people found those regularly consuming dairy products had no protection
at all against hip and forearm fractures. Indeed, women drinking three
glasses of milk daily had more fractures than women who rarely or never
touched milk.

In attacking cow's milk, PETA actually echoes the growing number
of nutritionists and doctors -- the late pediatrician Benjamin Spock among
them -- wiping off their milk mustaches.

From my perspective as an African-American physician, there is
another troubling side to dairy promotions, and especially to government
recommendations that it be part of every school lunch meal and similar
nutrition programs.

While only about 15 percent to 20 percent of U.S. whites are intolerant
of the milk sugar lactose, some 95 percent of Asian Americans, about 70
percent of African Americans and Native Americans, and more than 50 percent
of Mexican-Americans cannot digest it. Many get quite sick from it. Nature
starts to remove the enzymes that digest milk sugar once we have passed
the age of weaning.

Indeed, one can call lactose intolerance nature's normal warning
signal not to ``do dairy,'' akin to the protective pain signals prompting
you to snatch your hand away from a hot stove. Of course, some advocate
taking lactose-tolerance pills or adding small amounts of dairy at intervals
throughout the day to ``trick'' the body into accepting milk, ice cream,
and so on. But, if you wouldn't want to trick your hand into not feeling
a searingly painful stove, why would you want to temporarily mask the unhealthy
downside of dairy? Being lactose-intolerant really constitutes genetic
good luck.

It's bad enough that current federal dietary guidelines encourage
meat consumption, though they do list nutritionally sound alternatives,
such as legumes (beans and peas). However, the 1992-issued federal Food
Guide Pyramid's ``dairy section'' doesn't even bother to list substitutes,
though the 2000 Dietary Guidelines for Americans draft does finally mention
soymilk. Indeed, healthy dairy-free alternatives such as fortified soymilk
and calcium-set tofu have become increasingly available in supermarkets,
as well as in health food stores and food co-ops.

So, for your health's sake, why not replace cow's milk with soymilk
and other alternatives?

Milton R. Mills, M.D., a Stanford University-trained
physician specializing in nutrition, practices in Virginia and volunteers
as associate director of preventive medicine at the Washington-based Physicians
Committee for Responsible Medicine. He wrote this column for the Knight
Ridder/Tribune News Service.